The recent decision by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to privatize state theaters has caused a wide stir.

While I do believe the state should
provide funds for the arts, the state employment of actors and
management of theaters were not about the arts but state control of the
public and cultural space.
In fact, communist countries have
always had a keen commitment to “supporting” the arts and to using them
as an important vehicle to influence and control public imagination.
Therefore, as painful it is for many in the industry who will lose their
jobs, in the long run, the privatization of theaters will provide
freedom and market competition necessary for better productions and
performance by actors.
There is, however, an elephant in the room
-- a much larger, powerful state control mechanism: state regulation of
religion. It is really no surprise that the newly founded Turkish
Republic saw it vital to establish the Directorate of Religious Affairs
and, through it, to regulate and manage the type of Islam it sought to
enforce.

The directorate still consumes a giant slice of the state
budget, employs all imams in the country and by and large still
dictates particular readings of Islam. In the last few years, the
official enforcement of a particular creed has been widely challenged
and various groups who do not fit into that creed have argued for
representation and funds from the directorate. However, these acts are
not enough. The directorate must be decommissioned, just like state
theaters.

There are two common worries regarding the
decommissioning of the directorate. The first one comes from concerned
secularist circles, which fear that an end to state regulation would
open the floodgates of Islamism and all sorts of problems with religious
groups. The second one comes from concerned conservative circles, which
fear decommissioning the directorate would mean that clergymen and
mosques would not receive funding to perform their duties and thus the
practice of Islam would be harmed. As convincing as these concerns sound
to their respective adherers, they are both wrong.

The problem with the secularist argument

The
secularist argument is fundamentally flawed in its assumptions as to
the nature of Islam and the social and political aspirations of a vast
majority of Muslims in the country. Again and again, numerous studies
have shown how the vast majority of Muslims in the country demand
democracy, economic reforms and equality as well as freedom to live
according to their conscience, not Shariah law or a return to some
previous century.

Those who might fit into the Islamist or
fundamentalist categories already have their own religious networks
outside of state reach. Rather than enabling them to unleash an
Islamization plan, the fast-growing contemporary Muslim civil society in
the country would in fact minimize and challenge their appeal for those
who feel alienated from the state. In other words, far from it, the end
of the state market monopoly and the start of equal state distance from
all religions and creeds will create a competitive market that will
reward those religious actors who meet what the Turkish public demands,
which is clearly reform, freedom and advancement alongside traditional
values and personal piety.

The same implications apply to the
conservative arguments, too, over what would happen if the state were to
stop managing religion. Far from harming the practice of Islam, it
would in fact free Muslims to live, think and worship freely and thus
increase its vibrancy. Take for example state-managed Christianity in
northern Europe, where the clergy is state-employed and churches receive
state funds, versus the free-market religious competitions in which
Christian churches find themselves in the US.

While Christianity’s
public appeal in northern Europe is in decline, this is not so in the
US.
One of the key reasons behind this is that the clergy and
churches in the US must work hard to provide for the needs of their
congregations, as the survival of the church and the clergy depends on
their congregations. They must also continually engage with social and
philosophical developments and compete with other religious providers,
as they cannot take the durability and public plausibility of their
beliefs for granted.

In contrast, a clergyman in northern Europe
will always be paid as long as he plays the sacramental role of being
there and keeping the doors of the churches open, regardless of whether
anyone attends the services. It is only thanks to migration and Islam in
Europe that slowly northern European clergymen are finding themselves
having to learn how to defend their faith and keep their role in
society.

This is already observable in how energetic and
increasingly influential various Islam-inspired civil society movements
outside of state structures are. Obviously, the Directorate of Religious
Affairs cannot simply close up shop. However, the creation of
foundations that would accredit imams and allow citizens to donate money
for their work would solve the problem. The process would be a long,
complicated and difficult one. However, it would be the best thing to
maintain both the secular nature of the country and the freedoms of
Muslims and non-Muslims alike and to negotiate a healthy space for
religion, politics and public life.